Sep. 3, 2010

"They follow me home at night," Republican Christine O'Donnell said of unnamed political foes.

Written by

GINGER GIBSON

The News Journal

Republican Christine O'Donnell's Greenville Place Apartments townhome is listed as her address on her voter registration, but she declines to say where she sleeps "for security reasons." / News Journal file/WILLIAM BRETZGER

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U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell alleged in a published interview Thursday that her political opponents follow her home at night and hide in the bushes, suggesting Republican leadership is behind a plot against her since 2008 when she was their endorsed candidate.

Only a few days ago, O'Donnell saw an upswing in national attention as she was pegged as the next great tea party candidate in the wake of Joe Miller's Senate primary victory in Alaska. The California-based Tea Party Express pledged to spend up to $250,000 on her campaign ads.

Following publication of the interview, however, several national conservative bloggers who had trumpeted Miller in Alaska endorsed U.S. Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware, O'Donnell's opponent in the Sept. 14 Republican primary.

Castle also has the party's endorsement.

The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine based in Washington, reported Thursday that O'Donnell said unnamed opponents are following her.

"They're following me," the magazine reported O'Donnell said. "They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that -- they follow me."

O'Donnell said she has never reported the alleged incidents to police.

State GOP Chairman Tom Ross called the claims "disgusting," adding that in 2008 the party did everything possible to help her.

Mike Castle's campaign issued a one-word response: "delusional."

Neither O'Donnell nor her campaign responded to multiple phone calls and e-mails seeking a comment. They have declined interviews with The News Journal for more than a month.

During the interview with The Weekly Standard, O'Donnell raised questions about where she lives, saying she leaves her townhome at Greenville Place Apartments every night. The townhome is rented using campaign funds and is listed as her address on voter registration. O'Donnell refused to say where she sleeps for "security reasons."

O'Donnell suggested Ross and Castle were behind the stalkings, saying her campaign office was vandalized in 2008, when she was running against Democrat Joe Biden.

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"I'm not sure who did it, but I know for a fact that Mike Castle and Tom Ross were campaigning against me," O'Donnell told The Weekly Standard. "They've been sabotaging my candidacy since 2008. So who knows who did it back then."

She suggested they could also be behind the most recent incidents.

"What makes me think they won't do the same distasteful things they did in 2008, when the stakes are even higher, when we're even more viable," she said in the interview.

Ross said the Republican party paid for O'Donnell's filing fee in 2008 and let her use their office space. "To be frank, she is a delusional liar," he said. "We tried to help Christine, but quite frankly she's beyond help. She is so delusional and so far out there, eventually you just, you really do just have to stand up and say, 'enough is enough.' "

The interview with The Weekly Standard on Thursday followed a contentious on-air clash between O'Donnell and conservative Sussex County radio host Dan Gaffney on WGMD.

Gaffney, who supported her candidacy in 2006 and 2008, challenged O'Donnell on the truth of several statements she made campaigning this year, her third bid for the U.S. Senate.

He asked her about a statement she made this summer at a Pennsylvania event in which she claimed she "won in two counties" in the '08 challenge to Biden.

"I don't think I ever said I won two out of three counties," O'Donnell said.

Then Gaffney played the video clip in which she is heard to say, "I won in two out of three counties."

"I meant tied," she said.

"You didn't tie him either," Gaffney responded. Gaffney pressed her on the issue, insisting that since she got less votes, she had not tied.

"We absolutely did," O'Donnell said.

According to the Department of Elections, O'Donnell lost to Biden by 272 votes in Sussex County, 9,093 in Kent County and 116,944 in New Castle County.

O'Donnell tried to distance herself from a video posted Wednesday by her recently departed campaign spokesman Yates Walker on the Liberty.com site that suggested Castle was having an affair with a man.

"That's tacky," O'Donnell said. "I never called him gay."

Gaffney also questioned O'Donnell about the fact that she has more than $11,000 in unpaid campaign debts from 2008 and that she sold her Wilmington home to her boyfriend to avoid a sheriff's sale. He also suggested that her campaign workers appeared to bully critics at recent political events.

In response, O'Donnell charged Gaffney with being paid off by the Castle campaign, which he called "ridiculous."

When O'Donnell tried to turn questions about her finances into an attack on Castle, Gaffney muted her microphone.

Despite the shift by prominent conservative bloggers to endorse Castle, Tea Party Express is standing by its candidates.

"The two candidates are taking everything extremely personally, and it's going to be a mean fight right down to the end," the group's spokesman Levi Russell said. "I don't think it's going to be all clean and smiles."